Today, Israel’s Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, posted a reckless statement on X. In response to Iran’s brutal missile attacks on Israel’s civilians, he wrote that the people of Tehran would “pay a price.” The language was cruel, populist, and utterly disconnected from the values Israel claims to uphold.
After public outcry-- my own included-- Minister Katz walked it back, clarifying that Israel’s fight is not with the people of Iran but with the oppressive regime that rules over them. I’m glad he corrected himself. But the original statement still matters. Because when we talk about war, words are weapons too.
Let me say what he should have said from the start: Israel is not at war with the Iranian people. We are at war with the regime that oppresses them and tries to annihilate us.
This is not a theoretical debate for me. I’m writing this from Tel Aviv. For the past three nights, I’ve taken shelter as Iranian missiles rained down on my home. My safe room shook with every blast. I heard the booms, the sirens, the fear in my neighbours’ voices. I live in a democracy, but that doesn’t mean I’m safe.
It does mean that I still believe in the moral distinction that separates us from our enemies. The Iranian regime funds Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. It trains terrorists to butcher Israelis in their homes, while jailing Iranians for dancing in the streets. It slaughters our children, and it imprisons theirs.
What many in the West fail to see is that Israelis and Iranians are both being held hostage by the same tyranny.
We are on opposite sides of the same war—not against each other, but against a fanatical regime that uses civilians as shields, lies as a matter of course, and terror as diplomacy.
When Iranian missiles fall on Tel Aviv, they destroy homes, civilian structures, and playgrounds. When Israel responds, it targets military personnel and infrastructure. Sometimes, that infrastructure is deliberately placed inside residential neighbourhoods. That’s not accidental. It’s part of the regime’s playbook. One that they have trained Hamas and Hezbollah to use.
No Israeli I know wants to see Iranians suffer. We want to see them free. The fight for democracy in Iran and the fight for survival in Israel are not separate stories. They are parallel chapters of the same story of struggle.
I’ve met Iranian exiles in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. We don’t speak the same language, but we understand each other. We’ve both grown up under the same shadow: the same bombs, the same militias, the same terrorists who treat human lives as disposable. In London, Iranians have stood shoulder to shoulder with us at the rallies to release the hostages, and I stood with them and spoke at their rallies to release Iran from tyranny.
Some Western commentators, comfortable and far from this region, try to paint this as a clash of equals, or to lecture us about de-escalation. But we live this. We hide our children from missiles. We count the seconds in bomb shelters. We anxiously refresh news websites and social media, hoping not to see a familiar face among the dead.
And still, we hold onto our humanity.
We do not want war. We want peace. But peace will not come by pretending there is no difference between the Islamic Republic and its victims. That includes both Israelis and Iranians.
So yes, Minister Katz should have chosen his words more carefully. Because in this fight, clarity is everything. We are not like the regime in Iran. And we cannot afford to sound like them.
We fight not to destroy other people, but to stop a regime that threatens all people.
That is the line. And we must never cross it.
Woman, Life, Freedom.
Am Yisrael Chai.
